The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-11-07
and the good of your soul, and you must be
quiet while we close the service with
'BleSt he the tie that binds
Our hearts In Christian love "


rendered at the laying of the worlds corner
stone, when the morning stars sang to-
/ gether is not heard now: and though here
and there from this and that part of So
ciety, and from this and that part of the
| earth, there comes up "A thrilling solo of
| love, or a warble of worship, or a sweet
| duet of patience, they are drowned out by
| discord that shakes the earth
Paul says The whole creation groan-
eth,n and while the nightingale, and the
| woodiark, and the canary, and the plover
sometimes sing SO sweetly that their notes
| have been written out in musical notation,
and il is found that the cuckoo Singi in the
| key of ID, and that the cormorant is a basso
| in the winged choir, yet SpoitSman's gun
| and the autumnat blast often leave them
| rutiled and bleeding, or dead in meadow or
forest. Paul was right, for the groan i'm ma
ture browns out the prima donnaS of the
| sky.
| But if in this world things in general are
out of tune TO our frail ear, how much more
so to ears angelic and deifc 1t takes
skilled artist fully 10 appreciate disagree
ment of sound. Many have no capacity TO
| detect defect of musical execution, and,
/ though there were in one bar as many of
| fenses against harmony as could crowd in
! between the lower + of the bass and the
higher G of the soprano, it would give them
no discomfort, ,rhile on the foreheads of the
J stand out as a result of the narrowing dis
| sonance. While an amateur was perform
| ing on a piano and had just struck the
wrong chord, John Sebastian Bach, the inn
mortal composer, entered the room, and the
amateur rose in embarrassment, and Bach
rushed past the host, who stepped forward
| to greet him, and before the keyboard had
! stopped vibrating, put his adroit hand upon
| the keys and changed the painful inhar-
| mony into glorious cadence. Then Bach
| turned and gave salutation to the host who
had invited him.
| Tartipi, the great musical composer,
dreamed one night that he made a contract
with Satan, the latter TO be ever in the com
poser's service. But one night he handed to
Satar a violin, ON which Diabolus played
| such sweet music that the composer was
| awakened by the emotion and tried to repro
| duce the sounds, and therefrom was written
| Tartini's most famous piece, entitled the
| Devils Sonata a dream ingenious but
| faulty, for all melody descends from heaven,
and only discords ascend from hell All
1 hatreds, feuds, controversies, backbitings
| and revenges are the DEVILS sonata, are dia-
| bolic fugue, are demoniac phantasy, are
grand march of doom, are allegro of perdi-
| tion.
But the worst of all discords is moral dis
cord. If society and the world are pain
| fully discordant to imperfect man, what
1 y
| to define what sin is. 1t seems to me that
sin is getting out of harmony with God, a
| disagreement with His holiness, with His
purity, with His love, with His commands,
our will clashing with His will, the finite
dashing against the infinite, the frail
against the puiSsant, the created against the
| Creator. If a thousand musicians with flutes,
and cornet-a-piston, and trumpet, and
violincello, and hautboys, and tro nbone
| and all the wind and string instruments
that ever gathered il a Dusseldorf jubilee
should resolve to play out of tune, and put
| concord to the rack, and make the place
wild with shrieking, and grating, and rasp-
| ing sounds they could not make such a
pandemonium as that which RACES in sim
full soul when God listens to the play of its
| thoughts, passions and emotions-discord,
lifelong discord, maddening discord. The
world pays more for discord than it does for
consonance, High prices have been
paid for music. One man gave two hundred
and twenty-five dollars to hear the Swedish
songstress in New York, and another six
hundred and twenty-five dollars to hear her
| in Boston, and another six hundred and fifty
dollars to hear her in Providence Fabu-
lous prices have been paid for sweet sounds,
but far more has been paid for discord
| The Crimean war cost one billion seven
hundred million dollars, and our American
| civil war over nine and half billion dollars,
nations are about fifteen billion dollars
The world pays for this red ticket, which
| admits it to the saturnalia of broken bones
! and death agonies, and destroyed cities, and
ploughed graves, and crushed hearts, any
amount of money Satan asks. Discord +!
Discordl
But have to tell you that the song that
the morning stars sang together, at tho lay
| ing of the worlds corner stone, is to be re-
sumed again. Mozart's greatest overture
was composed one night when he was
| several times overpowered with sleep, and
artists say they can tell the places in the
music where he was falling asleep, and the
places where he awakened. So the overture
of the morning stars, spoken of in my text,
has been asleep, but it will awaken and be
more grandly rendered by the evening stars
of the worlds existence than by the morn
| ing stars, and the vespers will De sweeter
| than the mathis The work of all good men
and women, and of all good churches, and
all reform associations, is to bring the race
back to the original harmony. The rebel
| lious heart to be attuned, social life to be
attuned, commercial ethics TO be attuned
internationally to be attuned, hemispheres
to be attuned. But by what force, and in
| what wayf
In olden time the choristers had tuning
fork with two prongs, and they would strike
it on the back of pew or music rack, and
|
and all the other voices would join. In
modern orchestra the leader has a complete
instrument rightly attuned, and he sounds
that, and all the other performers turn the
| keys OF their instruments to make them cor
respond and sound the bow over the string,
and listen, and sound out over again, until
| all the keys are scrs wed to concert pitch,
and the discords melt into one great sym
phony, and the curtain hoists, and the baton
| taps, and audiences are raptured with
| Schumann's Paradise and the PERI" or
Rossini's ''Stabat Mater" or Bach's
Magnificent in ID, or Gounods "Redemp-
| tiona
Now, our world can never be attuned by
an imperfect instrument. Even Cremona
would not do Heaven has ordained the
only instrument, and it is made out of the
wood of the cross, and the voices that ac-
company it are imported voices, canLatrices
of the first Christmas night, when heaven
serenaded the earth with: "Glory TO God
the highest and on earth peace, goodwill to
men," Lest we start too far off, and get
| lost in generalities, we had better begin
with ourselves, get our own hearts and life
/ in harmony with the eternal Christ. Oh,
| for His almighty spirit to attune us, to
chord our will with His will, TO modulate
our life with His life, and bring us into
unison with all that is pure, and self-sacri-
| ficing aud heavenly. The strings of our
nature are all broken and twisted, and the
| how is so slack IL cannot evoke ANYTHING